In the pulp and paper industry, logs provide the raw material for the manufacture of paper and paper products. These logs are processed in large mills and the first step in handling of the logs often involves converting them into wood chips which are a convenient form for further processing.
The raw logs that are delivered to a mill often include pieces of waste plastic that are unfortunately becoming a common part of the environment. Plastic is used in a great deal of packaging and often ends up discarded into the environment. Unfortunately, when the logs are converted into wood chips, the plastic tends to be converted into smaller pieces as well. In the conversion of the wood chips into pulp and paper, the plastic pieces can contaminate the resulting paper product leading to reduced quality paper or paper that is unsuitable for use at all. Spoilage of new paper by plastic contamination can be a costly problem in the industry where a large batch of paper can be ruined or reduced in quality by a relatively small amount of unwanted plastic. Presently, to address this problem, mills simply rely on workers handling logs and wood chips to visually inspect the material and remove visible pieces of plastic. Obviously, this method is very inefficient and does not remove all plastic waste.